It can be done in Vietnamese with a interrogative particle for simple statements.

In Vietnamese, simple questions are formed

1. by adding a question word (interrogative particle) to the end of some statements, thus forming a question 2. by using a question word made up of two particles with other statements: one optional particle preceding the verb, while the other (particle) goes at the end of the statement, thus forming a question.

Seems to be very different from Chinese. In most cases, you can make a Chinese question out of an indicative by adding the particle "ma" at the end of the sentence, changing nothing else. If you use a question word, you mustn't use the "ma" marker.

And for the homework for Monday, there's the intriguing way of "turning round" question words, so that, using them in indicative mood, "who?" beomes "anyone", "what?" becomes "anything" etc.

I think the idea is a discourse marker. We use tag questions because we make a statement and wish to ellicit a response from someone, don't we?

It is interesting to look at when we use a negative tag (isn't it?), and when we use a positive one (is it?). The verbs we can use in English to make tag questions have to be capable of being operators: be, have, do, can/could, may/might, must, shall/should, will/would, dare, need and ought. The choice of verb is based on that used in the statement. If none of these is used in the statement, then do has to, well...do!

It is interesting to look at when we use a negative tag (isn't it?), and when we use a positive one (is it?).

This makes me think tag questions are a subset of rhetorical questions.

How do they score in terms of formality/politeness by the way? Do you find more tag questions in formal speaches than in casual ones or vice versa? Or is there no difference? I have read an article pointing out that men tend to use tag questions more than women, contrary to the wide-spread perception.

Discourse markers didn't exist forty years ago when I had my first encounters with university linguistics. Nowadays they seem to constitute a politically very correct field of research. In spite of this, I hope that I some day will have enough spare time to read up on the subject.

anders wrote:... In most cases, you can make a Chinese question out of an indicative by adding the particle "ma" at the end of the sentence, changing nothing else.

But as Anders also pointed out earlier, Chinese exhibits an intriguing flexibility as regards the interrrogative. Thus /verbal/bu=不/verbal/ where /verbal/ includes adjectives as well is a very frequent pattern : 行不行 ? 你去不去 ? 你好不好 ? In classical Chinese, special negative particles, like 非 and 否 (Flam will recognise them from his 漢文 studies) are used for this purpose, something like (but not always as «taggy», to pervert Garzo's terminology) the «is it not», «n'est-ce pas» «nicht wahr», «inte sant» of other languages, but they are not restricted to final positions in a a predicate, nor are they always - or mainly - rhetorical. Thus the second and third graphs in my tagline below - 记否 - correspond, to «remember» and «not», respectively, and together pose the question which I have translated «Do you [yet = 曾] remember ?»....